Dear Diary
by cruiscin lan
Summary: Puck comes over for more help with Glee stuff, and Rachel records the visit in her diary for posterity.


Dear diary,

As you know, I've invested a lot of time and energy into the Glee club at school. It's one of my _many_ extracurricular activities, true, but it's still my favorite for various reasons. For one thing, it provides an outlet for my stellar talent, and allows me to hone my skills in an ensemble setting. Aside from that, I'm starting to really enjoy the rest of that ensemble. I've already confided to you my interest in Finn Hudson, the lead male vocalist of our group and quarterback of the football team, although my social interaction with the other members of the group have been expanding, of late.

I'm talking about one member in particular, who came home with me after practice today. In fact, to say he followed me home like a puppy would not be an inaccurate description. I suppose I have an irresistible effect on some people. At any rate, he's relied on me before to assist him with preparing for a Glee-related project, and after rehearsal he'd expressed an interest in improving his singing while also expanding his repertoire. Since I am always ready to help out a teammate with my prodigious expertise in the area of music, I allowed him to come over.

"We don't really have to practice first, right? We can skip right to the making out?"

Perhaps I should take a moment to explain. This is Noah Puckerman. While I still consider Finn Hudson the object of my affection my greatest ally, Noah (who goes by "Puck" at school) has expressed an interest in me, romantically speaking. Diary, _he_ was the subject of the making out indiscretion I confided in an entry a few weeks ago. While I will readily admit that it was an enjoyable past time, our relationship flamed out after a short while and I hadn't really anticipated his attempt to rekindle it. I chalk it up to my ingenuous naïveté.

I didn't kick him out or anything. I realize it might seem strange to willingly help someone who is so clearly attracted to me, but consider this: in a few years when I have made my mark in the music industry and also on Broadway, I anticipate having to deal with this sort of unrequited attention frequently. It's good practice for when I'll need to fend off the many suitors that I will acquire as a young starlet.

Anyway, even though we were supposed to be working on musical arrangements, for a teenage boy like Noah, it's difficult to stay focused on the task at hand (particularly when I am wearing my pink and purple plaid skirt with the coordinating argyle knee-high socks).

Of course, the easiest way to turn someone down is to come up with an excuse, and fortunately there was one sitting right there on my bed - a basket of clean laundry one of my fathers had left for me to put away. "Oh, shoot. I have to put all this away first," I told Noah.

"It's cool," he replied. "I can help."

To be honest, that was not the response I was expecting. "I sincerely doubt it," I said to him, not without sarcasm. Really, he comes to school half the time in wrinkled t-shirts, and I think he sometimes wears the same pair of jeans all week. Even so, he set down his guitar and his bookbag and delved right in, taking one of my cashmere cardigans in his hands and... well, I don't even know how to begin describing what he was doing, but it certainly wasn't accomplishing anything.

"Okay, so maybe I'm no good at folding," he said as he finally gave up. "Maybe I can put them away?"

Noah has a very... let's say _loose_... Noah has a very loose idea of what constitutes limitations on personal space. I tried to be very firm with him, because I certainly don't want him near my... personals. "I'd rather you not," I said to him emphatically, but it was too late. He was already at my dresser, opening drawers at random.

"So where do you keep your _sexy_ underwear?" he asked.

That was the last straw.

"Don't you dare!" I objected, leaping towards him and forcing the drawers closed. He pulled his hand away just in time (Which is just as well. I would have hated myself for injuring his fingers and preventing him from improving his skills on the guitar).

He tried to play off his obvious invasion of space with a joke. "How come you wear so much argyle?"

It was a ridiculous question. Argyle is timeless, classic. While sometimes it falls out of favor among students "trendier" than I, in reality it is always in style. I would have replied with a witty retort, except somehow Noah had found his way into my closet, and he came across something I _definitely_ didn't want him to find.

"So what's in this bag?" he asked, pulling it out of the closet and tossing it on the bed.

I tried to keep myself from panicking. The one sure way to get him to open the bag would be to overreact. Boys are easily influenced; if you pretend you're not interested, they'll quickly lose interest, too. "Those are clothes to give away," I said matter-of-factly.

Somehow that statement had the exact _opposite_ effect from the one I had intended. "The Rachel Berry reject pile?" he said, with unmistakable excitement. "I've heard of such a thing, but I thought it was the stuff of myth and legend."

I tried to deflect him. "So you were actually paying attention in English class today?"

"I gotta get a load of these," he said, unmoved.

Why are boys so hard to distract when you _want_ to distract them? I very nearly unbuttoned my blouse, but I doubt even then he'd have batted an eye. So I used a sincere plea: "Please, Noah, I'd rather you didn't."

Unfortunately Noah Puckerman doesn't answer well to sincerity. "Oh, come on, Berry - you've got such _style_. I wanna see what gifts from Grandma didn't make the cut." He overturned the bag onto my bed, in a manner I can only describe as _wickedly gleeful._

"They aren't..." I started, but it was too late. In an instant they were scattered across the bed - cardigans, blouses, sweaters, skirts. The one unifying factor was that they were all ruined.

He was confused for a moment. "These are all..."

"Stains," I said, finishing his sentence for him. "From slushies. But you probably figured that out on your own."

Yes, diary, I know in the past I have disclosed certain instances in which I was victimized by bullies. I've been remiss to name names, mostly because I do not want to cause embarrassment to anyone's descendants when this tome is published posthumously by my estate, but now there is no way to avoid revealing this: Noah Puckerman was involved in nearly every "slushie" incident that I have described here in these pages.

I know it was strange of me to submit to his earlier advances, considering his treatment of me in the past, but I swear there'd been an abrupt change in his demeanor towards the beginning of this school year. Even though he's still prone to his baser urges - be they sexual or otherwise - he'd joined Glee of his own accord, and on rare occasions he can actually be _sweet_, not just to me but to others. He really went above and beyond when he used his Nana Connie's recipe for the handicapable bus fundraiser, for example.

At any rate, here he was faced with a literal pile of evidence of his past bullying, and I think it was just as distressing as getting a slushie to the face.

"Shit," he said, running his hand over one of my ruined sweaters. "I'm sorry."

"You've already apologized for that," I replied. But, after an instant of retrospection, I added, "It's okay." It's nice to hear someone say "I'm sorry" more than once, so it probably also doesn't hurt to be forgiven more than once, too.

I don't know why I felt so compelled to record this anecdote, diary. Perhaps because it shows my resilience in the face of adversity? Perhaps because it shows that redemption is possible for the human soul?

Or perhaps I feel a little guilty because I let Noah Puckerman kiss me again.

Oh, well, diary, it is getting late and if I don't record my Myspace video now, I will fall behind again.

XOXO,

Rachel Berry


End file.
